SailorTwain330

Thank you, Salty Aire! Another excellent guest blog entry, about some of New York’s shocking surges of violence and protest in the 19th century.

Occupy History

by Jerry Mikorenda

Outrageous acts of defiance have always pitted the Empire City’s granite landscape. Past infractions make the recent Occupy Wall Street Movement look like a picnic in the park.

Manhattan was a cauldron for riots as diverse in severity and cause as the city’s population. The first was the Doctors’ Mob Riot. It took place April 13-15, 1788 prompted by a group known as the “resurrectionists.” They were grave robbers stealing corpses for medical studies. Street mobs attacked Columbia College and New York Hospital.

Five years later, “boys, apprentices and sailors” were among those who believed a rape victim was forced to become a streetwalker. For two nights, the Brothel Riots raged. July 9-12, 1834, the Anti-Abolitionist Riots seethed as pro-slavery mobs attacked churches, businesses and homes of noted blacks and white abolitionists. Lizzie Jennings family was among those targeted by the ransacking. That same year, NYU purchased stone work from prisoners at Sing Sing causing the Stonecutter’s Riot. The 27th Regiment occupied Washington Square to quell the looters.

“Bread, Meat, Rent, Fuel!” was the cry as 5,000 starving women, children and men took to the streets on February 10, 1837 for the Flour or Bread Riot. The poor plundered homes of the rich protesting the monopoly on flour as the country’s banking system and economy collapsed. During the South Ferry Riot of 1846, Irish strikers battled the German laborers looking to replace them. The strikers refused to work a 13 hour day for .65 cents.

Bread Riots

Three years later, 200 troops were used to protect an English actor from a mob of 10,000 angry Irishmen in the Astor Place Riots.

Astor Place Riot

In 1857, the Great Police Riot put rival city police departments against each other. The Orange Riots of 1870 and 1871 were vicious confrontations between Irish Protestants (Orangemen) and Irish Catholics. In January 1874, the Tompkins Square Riot set 7,000 unemployed workers clashing with 1,600 police.

Orange Riots, 1871

To this day, the Draft Riots of 1863 remain the bloodiest civil resistance in American history. In all, 119 people, mostly African Americans, were killed.

Draft Riots

Lizzie Jennings‘ infant son died from riot-related complications. Ironically, 98 percent of those drafted in New York never served. The city used $5 million of public funds for draft exemptions. There were no special appeals for mistreated blacks. However, local businesses donated $40,000 toward their restitution.

The great melting pot boiled over more times than I was aware of. Fortunately, today, mob behavior in New York seems to be confined to Yankee Stadium. Ive been there twice (the old stadium) and the crazies were out in full force each time. I’ve enjoyed several visits to New York, to see relatives, and even they would joke that seeing the tourist sights would be safer on a day when the Yankees had a home game. I was born in Brooklyn, but my family moved to San Diego when I was two. Still, I consider myself a 4% New Yorker (2/55), and look forward to another visit some time. I’ll be sure to check the Yankee’s home schedule, before I go.

Teowulf – between the artillery and the missile launch (not to mention the train in the tunnel), Naked Gun actually did a bloody good job of attacking the metaphors often used in earlier Hollywood films.

Here, of course, we have a head (!) of steam being built up, and a locomotive which is probably a lot more than a sexual metaphor at this point. Trains symbolize arrival (and departure), as well as forces which take some time to get rolling – but turn into unstoppable juggernauts that it’s unwise to be in front of. So, you know, yeah.

I guess what I’m wondering is if the heart will be released because of Lafayette, or Elijah. And I’m still intrigued by the implicit connection between South and Pearl.

Still in awe of how something so putatively crude as charcoal can be used with such nuance. If I were to try anything this elaborate, I’d have a uniform grey smear on the page by the time I was done.

Tension, release, departure, innuendo…. there are many layers to metaphors.

I recall someone writing recently (Anne, perhaps?) that Sailor Twain would be a CGI animator’s dream, or something similar… I apologize for paraphrasing. I have been thinking about this quite a bit. Though I’m no 3D artist myself (I conceptualize in 2 dimensions; the third is my achilles heel), I think stop-motion would be attuned more to the mood… something like The Nightmare Before Christmas style. Maybe this is because of the video Mark posted about the dinner table scene, but it’s easier for me to envision them as sculptures rather than computer renderings.

Lauren, I don’t think I can take credit for that suggestion, though it’s a good one. If there were ever a live action movie, I would cast Blake Ritson as Twain: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0728682/ . For South, I wonder if Zooey Deschanel wouldn’t be perfect.

@ Mark : I finally taught a grade level below Middle Schol this year, so I was able to do a Read Aloud with your book, “Moving House.” The students were 4th graders. I thought they might be too old for the story, but I had worked with half of them the year before, so they trusted my judgement about a “really cool new book” They loved the book and contributed to an interesting discussion about moving anxiety, finding just the right place to live and facing changes in their lives. They liked the fantasy element of the house coming to life and defending the interests of the children. We also touched on how loving an object could bring it to life in the imagination of a child. I will follow up on this theme tomorrow, by reading the Eugene Field poems, “The Calico Cat and the Gingham Dog” and “Little Boy Blue”.

I can only see Hugh Jackman as Twain. Heike Makatsch has an interesting look, or maybe Olivia Wilde for South. I like both Stop Action and CGI; the first might be more affordable, but is labor intense; CGI may be too expensive, especially when reproducing some of the spectacular backgrounds that we have become accustomed to. Conventional animation or anime might be the best way to go..

I have lived near Hollywood all my life and even worked in the belly of the beast and I can tell you right now that nobody in a major studio has the vision to pull off a Twain film worthy of the source material. I do really like Anne’s casting choices and there is no doubt that Twain has incredibly cinematic sensibilities but it is a work of art, not a Hollywood blockbuster. I can just imagine trying to pitch the very serious and adult mermaid story to a studio exec. That said, if it was made into a film I would be there to support and would even hope for the best.

@ Deschutes River: Yes, it can be intense. I get misty too. I won’t dwell on the death of LBB. Instead, I will transition to the Toy Story characters, and how they move on to new owners who continue to give them life, when Andy outgrows them. Conclusion: Imaginary stories can help us to better understand difficult situations and begin thinking about real solutions.

@Daniel – you may well be right, and being Hollywood, they’d probably want to add all sorts of cute talking fish etc. (Oops, sorry Mark, if there are any cute talking fish coming up!!) for the Mickey D franchise. But what about an indie company? I guess there’s that financing sea-monster, though …

Well, as both you and mermaidan have already observed, this version is already an artistic treasure. And I will restate my eagerness to hold the actual book in my actual hands and actually read it. There’s no need to make it more, though the Dream Cast chatter is fun!

For me, a huge part of the experience is reading the illustrated posts about some aspect of history below each comic. It contributes to the rich period sense of the story, and I enjoy peering into a past that actually happened but of which I am by and large ignorant. I’m afraid that on film, that would be lost. Another major part of the Sailor Twain experience for me is the charcoal itself. The kind of moods that it’s able to convey are incredibly unique. Daniel’s right, this is art, and the medium is a large part of the experience.

@ Daniel and Anne: I think Wes Anderson might be able to do it.
Yes, we are dreaming, but there’s no harm in that! I tend to re-cast movies in my head or with my mother all the time (she’s more well-versed in film than me, but I tend to know more recent actors and actresses).

I agree with Anne: I suspect the best way to do this as a film would be as a reasonably well financed indie film. The big studio system would just screw it up. You could film it in black and white! That would help give it a nice 1880s flavor as well. The costuming would be a killer.

Animation might be better, if the animators could maintain the richness of the environment and shading in the thousands and thousands of drawing. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. The drawings we see would make good story boards for the animated film. Sound – the proper voices are tremendously important, and South’s singing would need some special sound processing way beyond anything I can think of.